by Sherry Jones
New York: Beaufort Books, 2008. 432 pp. $25

Reviewed by Robert Spencer*

Muhammad and Aisha, a Love Story

Jones, correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs news agency, never expected her novel about Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, the first caliph, and favorite wife of the prophet of Islam, to become a battleground in the war over free speech between the West and the Muslim world. Rather, as she explained, “I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammed … I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder.”[1]

The Jewel of Medina became a cause célèbre when Random House dropped it in August 2008 just before publication, citing fear of threats from Muslims — threats, it bears noting, that had not yet materialized. Subsequently, three Muslims were arrested in London for firebombing the offices of the book’s new British publisher, Gibson Square, which also then dropped the book.[2] It has now been published in the United States by Beaufort Books, which, in a press release, said that it “knows how to look for trouble.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

So, I’m guilty, I also stood on line with everyone else and contributed to James Bond’s record-setting weekend box office receipts of $70.4 million dollars in hard American currency. Daniel Craig’s Bond in Quantam of Solace has just trumped his earlier record in Casino Royale of $40 million dollars for an opening weekend. … (Continue reading…)

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by Daniel Pipes*

NOTE: This is Daniel Pipes’ foreword to the new book by Jonathan Schanzer, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine, released today.

Divisions among Palestinians generally do not receive their due attention, Jonathan Schanzer correctly points out, in the immense academic and journalistic coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead, an official, propagandistic, and inaccurate party line holds sway. To quote Rashid Khalidi, a former Palestine Liberation Organization employee now teaching at Columbia University,^[i] a “uniform Palestinian identity” exists. The Palestinians are one — full stop, end of story.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I always thought it was kind of obvious that Americans were evolving — seeing people as more than just black and white (skin colors) — especially since the late ’60s. Just look at the Bush Administration, which “appointed a more diverse set of top advisers than any president in history”, like Condoleezza Rice, Colin L. Powell, Roderick R. Paige, Alphonso Jackson, Claude Allen, Leo S. Mackay, Jr., Larry D. Thompson, and Stephen A. Perry.

Obama wouldn’t have been elected if not for white voters (if we can define what “white” means). Many children who may have written their own futures off because of their race will now have new hope for success, and they will know that working hard and getting educated, as Obama did, is important. It will also be harder for people to shirk personal responsibility by using the race card as many consider the presidency the highest achievement in the land, and an African-American has made it.

Confirmation that race is becoming less important to Americans has come from none other than the New York Times in a story entitled, “For Pollsters, the Racial Effect That Wasn’t:”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Radical Muslims have once again perpetrated a heinous, misogynistic act of barbarity against a female child. Such acts reveal the deeply repressed state of some Muslim males. They force their women to cover themselves up so as not to arouse sexual temptations, apparently not trusting themselves. They blame women who are, for example, raped — even executing them. Such “punishments” are almost incomprehensible to most Westerners, but the civilized world needs to pay attention to these acts of violence, as they provide deep insight into the “thinking” of Islamists. From the Daily Mail, entitled, “Somali girl ‘pleaded for mercy’ before Islamists stoned her to death for being raped:”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

America: Land of the free and home of the brave. A 92-year-old woman, Betty Owen, today epitomized the spirit that built this great nation — a true grit which I can only hope we will sustain. (Actually, we are in need of revitalizing that spirit and sense of unity.) I hope this story gets a modicum of coverage, that some smart school teachers will share Owen’s story with their pupils, that parents will tell their kids about what Owen did today — indeed, that Americans everywhere will pause to ponder the spunk needed to be a good citizen all throughout life. From the AP:

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By Phyllis Chesler

… There are important reasons to vote for Obama and important reasons to vote for McCain. Neither candidate thrills me, both frighten me but for different reasons. But, what worries me even more than the candidates is the way in which so many Americans seem to have lost both their gravity and their sanity. They are behaving like drunken soccer fans or like ecstatic True Believers undergoing a religious transformation. During Obama’s acceptance speech 100 years ago in Denver, I saw people of all ages, both genders, and of every color, weeping, trembling, transfixed. … (Continue reading…)

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By Phyllis Chesler

I have been told that younger Americans get their information mainly online or on TV and not through books. What a pity! To me, books are beautiful to hold and to read. The solitude that reading a book requires, ideally, without interruption, allows for reflection and is better suited to human capacities. Quick reads of brief “breaking news” snippets, which are frequently interrupted, mid-sentence, by other presumed “breaking news” snippets, is an exercise better suited to a machine, and not to a human being. I fear that this cognitive style teaches us to behave as if we all have attention deficit disorders. … (Continue reading…)

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by Supna Zaidi*

Imagine Dodger Stadium full of loud and whooping fans cheering on, not baseball, but your weekly stoning and flogging of adulterers, thieves and other errant citizens of southern California.

This is America under Islamic law, or Shari’a, a system that everyone should fear. Or so, Alan Kornman, director of the United American Committee (UAC) thinks. He continues to fundraise for a freeway billboard in Florida stating, “Shari’a Is Hate,” to educate America before it’s too late.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The recent distribution of some 28 million copies in the United States of the 2005 documentary Obsession has stirred heated debate about its contents. One lightening rod for criticism concerns my on-screen statement that “10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.”

The Muslim Public Affairs Council declared this estimate both “utterly unsubstantiated” and “completely without evidence.” Masoud Kheirabadi, a professor at Portland State University and author of children’s books about Islam, informed the Oregonian newspaper that there’s no basis for my estimate. Daniel Ruth, writing in the Tampa Tribune, asked dubiously how I arrived at this number. “Did he take a poll? That would be enlightening! What does ’support’ for radical Islam mean? Pipes provides no answers.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

It’s official now. Over the weekend, the FBI finally added Yaser Abdul Said to its Most Wanted List for the ‘Muslim Honor Killing’ of his daughters. Bill Warner, who is apparently an FBI Florida-based consultant, is the one who defines it as a Muslim honor killing. … (Continue reading…)

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By Jonathan Spyer*

Deeply embedded in Palestinian nationalism is the notion that Israeli Jewish identity is analogous to that of communities born of European colonialism, which are not seen as having legitimate claim to self-determination. No reconsidering of this characterization took place during the period of the peace process of the 1990s. Hence, the short period of acceptance of the "two-state solution," was a departure by Palestinian nationalism from its more natural stance, and the current trend of return to the "one-state" option is a return to a position more in keeping with the deep view of the conflict held throughout by this trend.

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by Cinnamon Stillwell*

Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) will be hosting a conference on October 23 that asks the loaded question: “Is There a Role for Shari’ah in Modern States?“

The Saudi-funded ACMCU and its founding director, John Esposito, one of the foremost apologists for radical Islam in the academic field of Middle East studies, have certainly been doing their bit to make the idea more palatable.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Wall Street totters and people who only yesterday were multi-millionaires are literally paupers today. Hurricanes devastate the Caribbean and Texas and people are dead, homeless, without power of any kind. Trains collide in California and people are dead, wounded. While greed and hubristic risk-taking might have played a role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Bear Sterns, the lesson for most of us is this: Some devastation cannot be predicted nor can we protect ourselves from it. … (Continue reading…)

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By Barry Rubin

If I had to nominate the funniest cartoon I’ve ever seen, it was a very simple one showing a driver in a car at a “T” junction. He was staring desperately at three signs that read: No Left Turn; No Right Turn; No U-Turn.

The Middle East isn’t quite like that, but the current moment–though surely temporarily–seems somewhat akin to that drawing.

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